Two Piano Pieces (Lullaby and Capriccio), B188

Dvořák intended to write another cycle of piano pieces after Humoresques, however, these two superb little pieces are only a fragment of what the composer had originally planned, and were only published after his death by Simrock in 1911. Connections with Humoresques are evident particularly in the way the themes are treated; in the first piece Dvořák uses a three-part song form, in the second a more complex quasi-rondo form. Both works have shades of the distinctive melodies of the composer’s contemporary, Edvard Grieg, a unique phenomenon in Dvořák’s oeuvre. The third part of the planned cycle appeared in his manuscript merely as an eight-bar sketch marked Dithyramb, which he later used as a base for the polonaise theme from his opera Rusalka.